Application of Multiple Metamagic Feats

Application of Multiple Metamagic Feats

Is there a method for determining how metamagic feats are applied to a spell?

Here are two examples:

A) Extend Spell and Persistent Spell are applied to Divine Favor. Is the Extend Spell feat or the Persistent Spell feat applied first? If Extend is applied first, the duration is doubled, then changed to 24 hours. If Persistent Spell is applied first, the duration is made 24 hours then doubled for a result of 48 hours. Does the caster get to choose the order in which the feats are applied to the spell?

B) How is a twined, empowered, split ray of enfeeblement handled? (targeting one creature) 1) Is it ((((1d6+5)*1.5)*2)*2)? Empower is applied first, then the spell is split into two rays, then twinned. This is the most beneficial to the caster. It is possibly overpowering as it results in a penalty of 36-64 to the targets strength. 2) Is it (((1d6+5)*1.5)*3)? This is like the above example, but uses the rule on multiplying when doubling a double. 3) Something else?

Some say metamagic feats are applied only to the base spell, but this results in nonsensical occurrences such as an Extended Energy Substituted (Cold) Maximized Acid Arrow? If the feats don't interact at all it'd have to deal a combination of Maximized([cold + acid]) for the original duration the Rolled([acid]) for the Extended portion. Plus there is only one mention of feats not interacting, and that is the example under the Maximize Spell feat.

I have used the following rule:The caster may designate the order in which metamagic feats are applied and choose the most beneficial application of those feats, unless the feat makes note of an exception.

A) Persistant spell is broken enough as it is. I'd rule that the spell lasts for 24 hours, though I never personally allow persistant spell in my games. It is my belief that no spell should last for over 24 hours, as that is when you re-memorise spells. Allowing it to last for 48 hours lets the character prepare and cast a new set of persistant spells for 24-48 hours, giving them twice the power that a normal character would have in constant effect that day.

B) I'd say option 1, though option 2 could be argued for, and I'd agree with your general rule. I'd say option 1 because I'd believe that split ray, which alters the spell, should take effect before twin spell, which affects the casting of the spell. The spell takes affect twice, but the spell itself is altered by split ray. Persistant spell and Extend is the only combination (that I know of) that I wouldn't allow to stack, and this is only because of the massive brokenness of Persistant spell.

A basic metarule: a doubled double gives a triple, not a quadruple. Another way to consider this (also illustrated by the maximize and empower) is ADD, don't multiply. Thus, it would be plausible to say that a persistent, extended spell would gain a duration of 24 hours, plus its normal duration from the Extend.

b) Twinned, empowered, and split: go back to the Doubled Double = Triple basic principle. Only 1 of the rays gets empowered, AND only 1 gets twinned or split. Net result: *3* rays, not 4, one of which is empowered. Assuming all 3 rays hit, you'd need to roll the empowered ray separately, but the net damage would be basically about 3d6+19.

That's assuming Split Ray can be used in the manner you describe, which might not be the case...

The order of the feats is NEVER important. Apply each feat onto the base spell separately.

Quote:A basic metarule: a doubled double gives a triple, not a quadruple. Another way to consider this (also illustrated by the maximize and empower) is ADD, don't multiply.

In the case of the split ray and the twin spell being applied to the Ray of Enfeblement, this works oddly if you split the ray to two targets. In that case, if you choose one target for the Split Ray he would take a triple strength spell, but if you choose two targets they would each take double strength spells. Odd.

I am trying to be as faithful to the RAW as possible. It just seems the rules are not clear in this case. I don't think one can extrapolate from the Empower/Maximize example that all feats are to be handled that way. Otherwise, they would have mentioned that in the general metamagic rules section.

Quote:The order of the feats is NEVER important. Apply each feat onto the base spell separately.

But no order and the aplication to only the base spell can give nonsensical results. Consider the Extended Energy Substituted (Cold) Maximized Acid Arrow? If the feats don't interact at all it'd have to deal a combination of Maximized([cold + acid]) for the original duration and Rolled([acid]) for the Extended portion.

Clairifying rules for the application of multiple metamagic would be a nice sage advice or Rules of the Game article.

Metamagic stacks, but it does not multiply. This is consistent with other multipliers (a doubled double is a triple) and the RAW rule on Empower+Maximize (=Maximize +50% rolled amount).

So:A) Extend and Persistent are applied simultaneously and seperately. In the case of Divine Favor, Persistent changes the duration to 24 hours, while Extend adds 1 minute to the duration. The result is a duration of 24 hours and 1 minute.

B) Again, the effects are applied seperately. Twin adds one ray which targets the original target. Split adds one ray which targets anyone within 30 feet of the original target. Empower increases the effectiveness of the original ray only. So assuming all rays hit the original target, it's (1d6+5)*1.5 (1d6+5) + (1d6+5), remembering that each of the three rays requires a seperate attack roll to hit. Always, always think of additions rather than multiplications.

As for your question of the Extended Maximized Melf's Cold Arrow, since the three feats change different properties of the spell (energy type, duration, and damage), the order of application is irrelevant: one makes it cold, one makes it last longer, and the other makes it maximized. Using Extend on a Maximized spell is a perfectly legitimate and effective method of getting more bang for your buck. (If you meant Admixture, not substitution, you would indeed maximize only the acid component of the damage, since Admixture adds cold damage on top of the basic damage.)

The reason why these examples aren't mentioned in the rules is because in the PHB, the only feats that affect the same property are Empower and Maximize. However, since you are confused, you are right about this being featured in Rules of the Game.

In the past, my group and I have always applied metamagic to the base spell. Confusion arose when a player did an energy substitution (cold), widened fireball. The result being a 20' radius cold area surrounded by a 20' ring of fire. This seems like an odd result, so we decided to rethink our interpretation.

Part of the problem is, energy substitution is a bit weird, especially when you consider energy admixture.

Consider a twinned, widened, energy sub'd fireball. The failure to multiply says, the normal one gets widened, but second one (created by the twinning) doesn't. But BOTH get energy sub'd.

In order for energy sub and energy admixture to make sense, we need to say that energy sub fundamentally changes the base spell. That's something we never say about any other metamagic feat...eschew materials, silent, and still change the casting, while (as best I can recall) maximize, widen, extend, etc. etc. don't change the base.

It's not simply that "maximize affects damage amount, while energy sub affects damage type" because Twin or Repeat Spell, Split Ray, and the like, are creating duplicates that would touch on EVERY aspect of a spell. Energy Sub has to modify the baseline spell we use for everything else.

The easiest way is to always apply metamagics from the lowest to the highest, and keep this as a general rule. Then extend spell would be added before persistent spell, thus making it a useless feat for this application.

Quote:As for your question of the Extended Maximized Melf's Cold Arrow, since the three feats change different properties of the spell (energy type, duration, and damage), the order of application is irrelevant: one makes it cold, one makes it last longer, and the other makes it maximized. Using Extend on a Maximized spell is a perfectly legitimate and effective method of getting more bang for your buck. (If you meant Admixture, not substitution, you would indeed maximize only the acid component of the damage, since Admixture adds cold damage on top of the basic damage.)

And how is that different from allowing Split Ray, Twin and Empower to stack?

Hint : Its not.

You get the full effects of all MM feats that you apply to a spell. This means that Twinned Empowered Fireball gives you two 15d6 Fireballs and a Twinned Empowered Energy Admixtured Fireball gives two 30d6 Fireballs.

Quote:It's not simply that "maximize affects damage amount, while energy sub affects damage type" because Twin or Repeat Spell, Split Ray, and the like, are creating duplicates that would touch on EVERY aspect of a spell. Energy Sub has to modify the baseline spell we use for everything else

No, its worse than that. If you rule that MM doesnt stack, that you dont get the full benefit applied to the entire spell, you end up with stupidity like a Stilled Empowered spell having a partly somatic component or a Quickened Extended Spell taking both a free and a standard action to cast. Energy Sub isnt the exception. Empower + Max is the exception.

That's been your position, but it isn't supported by the fundamental principle of a doubled double = a triple. Twin is a double; admixture is a double. You're asserting that a twinned, admxitured fireball would give a pair of 20d6 fireballs, and that's a quadrupling effect, not a tripling.

But the question is whether this holds in this case. The text of Twin spell says the spell takes effect again. It does not double damage, but actually takes full effect again (whatever that entails).

I'm not saying anyone's wrong, as I don't completely understand it myself, but when I read that I think that the spell (however modified) takes effect a second time, as though you cast the exact same spell twice.

The question is if the modifications from the first spell take effect as well, not whether double damage twice is a triple, as this isn't a doubling of damage. And it can be argued either way.

Note: it is effectively doubling damage, but not literally - the enemy gets seperate saves, seperate SR, seperate attack rolls - this is a completely different source of damage. To me, saying that twin spell just doubles damage is like saying firing two arrows is just doubling the damage from one arrow.

Personally, I say do what makes sense to you, so long as it doesn't make the caster overpowerful or nerf them.

I'm in agreement with Tiburon here. If you do the analysis, allowing the "doublings" to affect each other results in spell damage/effect scaling faster than it should. This is exacerbated at higher levels where stacking metamagics is possible. Because of the lack of save DC scaling, it is most useful in scenarios when fighting mooks or when the spell doesn't allow a save (e.g. Orb of Energy from Complete Arcane).

That said, metamagic feats are painful because of the double cost (buying the feat, then paying for the spell level increase). I would also argue for cleaning up the metamagic feat system - ideally by implementing a system that is intrinsically scalable (spend more power points to some cap limited by level) to increase damage, save DC, et al. (ala the Expanded Psionics Handbook).

Quote:That's been your position, but it isn't supported by the fundamental principle of a doubled double = a triple. Twin is a double; admixture is a double. You're asserting that a twinned, admxitured fireball would give a pair of 20d6 fireballs, and that's a quadrupling effect, not a tripling.

This isnt a doubled doubling, this is two effects working at the same time. Do you have a problem with Twinned Stilled spells having no somatic component? Do you have a problem with DBF being Twinned? Why do you believe that Empower only affects half of a twin spell?

A Repeating Fireball goes off again in the following round. A Reapeating Twinned Fireball goes off twice in this round and Twice in the next. A Repeating Twinned Admixed Fireball goes off for Double damage twice in this round and does double damage twice in the next round. Nice effect. But you've paid four feats and +11 spell levels for it.

Quote MarshallWHM6K, "This isnt a doubled doubling, this is two effects working at the same time. Do you have a problem with Twinned Stilled spells having no somatic component?"

This is an apples to oranges comparison. Still Spell, Silent Spell, Quicken Spell and similar metamagic feats affect how you cast the spell, but not the outcome of the spell effect.

In contrast, Empower Spell, Maximize Spell, Twin Spell and similar metamagic feats affect the outcome of the spell effect. By the rules as written in the 3.5E PHB, Empower Spell and Maximize Spell are applied separately to a spell (i.e. a 10d6 Fireball becomes 60+5d6 with both feats).

Complete Arcane does not explicitly specify whether the additional metamagic feats multiply each other's benefits or are applied separately. I do think there is a valid argument that the rules as written ala "two x2 effects give x3 together" and specifically how Empower and Maximize stack together give a precedent for Empower Spell and Twin Spell being applied separately (i.e. Empower only affects one of the spell effects that goes off, Twin replicating the base spell).

The real issue is game balance. For that you need to do the analysis. I've only done this up to 20th level spellcaster with 9th level spells. Here it is for the sake of looking at the numbers ...

All the above assumed stacking of metamagics except maximize and empower if I recall correctly. Here is the ratio of damage output with metamagics vs. damage output with no metamagics. The first column is caster level.

Right. A Twinned Twinned Fireball would give 3. A Repeat Twinned Fireball will give A Twinned Fireball this round a Twinned Fireball next round. There is no doubled doubling.

Quote:This is an apples to oranges comparison. Still Spell, Silent Spell, Quicken Spell and similar metamagic feats affect how you cast the spell, but not the outcome of the spell effect.

No. Its getting the full effect for your paid for ability. It doesnt matter if I'm getting Still Twinned or Quicken Twinned or Maximize Twinned, You either get the full effects or you get Weirdness. Leave Twinned out of it. Heck, leave Still and Silent out. Does and Empowered Widened Fireball do Donut damage? Does an Enlarged Empowered Fireball do any extra damage outside its normal range? Are you really going to claim that just because a MM feat affects the damage dice it works differently than the rest of them?

Not to mention that all your analysis points out just how bad an idea it is to keep dropping more and more MM feats on a low level spell.

PS Max and Empower have special rules because Empower depends on rolled damage and Max gets rid of the roll. Without a special rule they DONT work together at all.

It seems pretty clear that a Widened Maximized Fireball would do 60 damage in the widened area of effect: damage is not affected by Widen spell, just the area; and there is no specific exception to how these metamagics interact in the PHB. MarshallWHM6K's argument here is akin to saying what happens if the range of a missile weapon gets longer - does that mean the weapon damage suddenly drops outside that range, of course not. It's a nice strawman, but it doesn't directly address the issue of damage affects stacking.

Looking at the analysis I did above, it looks like allowing Twin spell to stack with Empower or Maximize doesn't cause a substantial jump in damage output. So from a game balance perspective, I don't think it is a big deal - in fact stacking may be necessary to make the additional metamagic feat even worthwhile (though Twin Spell is cheaper than Quicken Spell for the purpose of doubling your damage output/round).

My greater concern would be if the stacking of metamagics might be overpowered at levels beyond 20th, but so far I haven't seen anything that is substantially more dangerous (incrementally yes, but the increment is small) than an Empowered Maximized spell is.

The argument for coming back to game balance is fairly obvious. If a rule is too good, then it may break the game. If a rule is too weak, then it may not be worthwhile to include (e.g. why bother with Twin Spell if Empower Spell and Maximize Spell in combination are always better).

Marshall, the argument you present is absurd on its face. Repeat Twin gives 4, while Twin Twin only gives 3? What IS Repeat, but Twin executed the next round? That's why it's a level lower; it's slower. You're also attempting an incredibly selective application of the double double principle; you get it in one place, you don't get it in another.

Now, if part of the point you're making is, lumping all the metamagic feats into one class, makes reconciling these stacking issues complicated...you have a valid point.

Tess: your point on balance is valid IF we want to have metamagic feats balanced with using higher level spells. This may entail one of two things: either sacrifice the general principles on doubled doubles (which I could buy because the caster level changes ARE cumulative, and the power of spell slots increases much more than linearly), or rework the metamagic feat system in some way. However, IIRC a 3.0 design point was, metamagic'd spells were never intended to be as good as using a higher level spell slot.

One thing this thread is pointing out: the entire metamagic system needs reconsideration. It may well be that we need 2 separate systems...one for prepared casters, one for spontaneous casters. The One Size Fits All approach is very likely to break down because of the vast difference in application time. Or, maybe we need a recognition that for wizards or clerics, metamagic feats are NOT necessarily the optimal route in all cases, and one of the basic errors is in attempting to build a complete system that will work equally well for both.

Here's some food for thought: in most cases, the adjustments made from 3.0 to 3.5 were driven by feedback from the user community, pointing out the problems and abuses n the system. With metamagic, the 1 major example I can recall offhand, was the multiply-stacked Empowers on any stat boosting spell. They said, you can't stack Empowers. Otherwise, tho...beyond the issue of "how do we figure out how to stack this stuff????", I can't recall that many extensive discussions about metamagic in general. Why?

The answer may be: because it's so bloody expensive and hard to use, that *few people bother with it.* Or at least, only in some very, very narrow applications, like a Stilled Dim Door.

So, the point for thought: perhaps the evidence for the reexamination of the metamagic system is in the *silence* of the user community.

Quote:It's a nice strawman, but it doesn't directly address the issue of damage affects stacking.

:/ ??? Strawman? How is that a strawman?

I agree its pretty damn obvious how a Widened Empowered Fireball would work. The Widened area is Empowered. What needs to be seen is that a Twin Empowered Fireball works the same way. The Twinned area is Empowered.

Quote:My greater concern would be if the stacking of metamagics might be overpowered at levels beyond 20th, but so far I haven't seen anything that is substantially more dangerous (incrementally yes, but the increment is small) than an Empowered Maximized spell is.

The only way to break meta-magic is to allow stacking. Even then, the multiplicative rule comes into play and you end up with Double Empower=Twin=Admix. The difference is one way only requires you to buy one feat while the other requires an ongoing investment.

Quote:Marshall, the argument you present is absurd on its face. Repeat Twin gives 4, while Twin Twin only gives 3? What IS Repeat, but Twin executed the next round? That's why it's a level lower; it's slower.

Hah. Yes, Because Twin Twin is actually a double double. Get it? Get it?(sorry, couldnt resist) While Repeat Twin is not. That one round delay is a huge difference, so is having to spend another feat.

Quote: You're also attempting an incredibly selective application of the double double principle; you get it in one place, you don't get it in another.

It is? Would both sides of a Twinned spell be Extended? Doesnt Repeat just add another round of duration? Youre better off trying to argue against Admix stacking. Even then tho its a stretch because in all cases its +100% and then x2 instead of x2x2...